Increasingly, enterprises are deploying Self-Service Terminals (SSTs) at various locations for use by consumers. The locations can include financial institutions, grocery stores, retail stores, government venues, entertainment venues, gaming venues, transportation venues, and the like.
One type of SST is an Automated Teller Machine (ATM). ATMs present unique changes to a servicing enterprise because security is of utmost concern. In fact, network access to the network, which the ATM communicates with for financial transactions, is often unavailable for access to servicing engineers. As a result, most service for ATMs occurs in person, where the service personnel are physically present at the ATM.
Still security is a major issue for ATMs. One technique recently used to circumvent ATM security entails inserting a boot disk in a device port of the ATM to reboot the ATM from the boot image on the boot disk. This is particularly prevalent with ATM's having the Windows™ operating system. The rogue boot on the boot disk replaces key applications on the ATM and exposes the ATM to being depleted of cash.
Adding passwords to the BIOS of the ATM, such that the BIOS is essentially locked down, is possible. But this is an unworkable solution, since the BIOS passwords cannot be changed remotely and without changing the passwords a bigger security issue would surface should a password be exposed or compromised. Manually visiting each ATM to change the passwords periodically or when one ATM is compromised would create undue hardships on the organization that services the ATMs.